Jacob Ward

Contract Front End & JavaScript Developer

👨‍💻 About me

The astute reader will have noticed that I am a Contract Front End & JavaScript Developer. However, I suppose there is more to me than a job title, especially one which doesn’t really describe what I actually do.

So WTF do I actually do?

I’m not a huge fan of the terms, but most of my time is split between Front End Architecture, Front End Ops, and on a good day some actual Front End Development. Without going into a ridiculous amount of detail, I spend my time…

architecting front end build, test, and deployment processes.

creating coding standards, pattern libraries, and style guides.

monitoring and ensuring code quality, and best practices.

writing clean JavaScript, HTML & CSS.

🕰

How my typical day pans out

06:00

Wake up, take medication, smoke a few cigarettes

06:15

Jump in the shower and ponder any current issues

06:30

Get dressed in whatever I can find - never a proper shirt

06:45

Leave for work and sit in traffic, listening to BBC Radio 4

07:30

Get to the office and start work *

13:00

Spend my lunch break on personal projects and learning new stuff

14:00

Get back to my desk and hopefully solve whatever I was working on

16:00

Leave the office and sit in traffic, listening to BBC Radio 4

17:00

Get home and hopefully get in a cheeky hour of #100DaysOfCode

18:00

Dinner time!

18:30

A little TV if something good is on

22:00

Read a chapter of whatever book I’m currently reading

23:00

Go to sleep

Do I do anything other than work?

Surprisingly, I do actually have a few interests outside of work.

❤️ Things I love

🚫 Things I hate

😂 Emojis

🤓 Hipsters

🎓 Learning

😏 False modesty

🌈 Open Source

👳 ‘Guru’ developers

🦏 JavaScript

🙏 Religious nonsense

💤 Afternoon naps

📆 Task estimation

💻 My job

👔 Dressing smart

🐂 Red Bull

🐈 Cats

💊 Valium

❄️ The cold

✍️ Tattoos

🎉 False celebrations

🖥 About the site

I’m constantly learning and trying out new things. This is kind of a place for me to take notes on what I’m doing, share new things I’ve found out, basically just somewhere for me to have a little brain dump every now and then.

Sometimes you might see four posts in a row. Sometimes you might not see anything for a month.

If this site is still up, it means I’m alive somewhere because the domain registrar is still collecting the payment from my bank.

📚 About my book collection

I get a bit geeky about books. I love learning from books and have a massive library of technical and programming books.

Here’s a selection of some of my favourites, most of which will have been used at some point as reference material for the posts you find here.

Whilst many of the resources here are available for free online, I would encourage you to support the authors by purchasing either the eBook or paperback versions, if you can afford it.

With the University of Southampton consistently being #1 in pretty much all guides, I then went on to study General Engineering there. After 2 years in Southampton, I decided to move back to Birmingham to finish off my studies.

During the summer break period, I was approached by Cruise.co.uk to work as a Front End Developer for them. I hastily accepted the offer and never looked back.

Three years later and I’m a contractor in the industry, mostly recognised for my vanilla JavaScript (ES6+) and AngularJS development skills. Yes, most businesses still use AngularJS. Businesses want to minimise risk, and AngularJS is a safe bet.

I also have experience with Node.js, Angular 2⁄4, ReactJS, and most of the other frameworks, libraries and tools in the JavaScript ecosystem.

But, what I love most, is plain ol’ vanilla JavaScript coding and keeping up to date with the latest ECMAScript specs.